Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas

Fair lady of learning, playfellow of spring,
Who to thy towery hospice in the vale
Invitest all, with queenly claim to bring
Scholars from every land within thy pale;
If aught our pageantry may now avail
To paint thine antique story to the eye,
Inspire the scene, and bid thy herald cry
Welcome to all, and to all comers hail!

Come hither, then he crieth, and hail to all.
Bow each his heart a pilgrim at her shrine,
Whatever chance hath led you to my call,
Ye that love pomp, and ye that seek a sign,

390

Or on the low earth look for things divine;
Nor ye, whom reverend Camus near-allied,
Writes in the roll of his ennobled pride,
Refrain your praise and love to mix with mine.

Praise her, the mother of celestial moods,
Who o'er the saints' inviolate array
Hath starr'd her robe of fair beatitudes
With jewels worn by Hellas, on the day
She grew from girlhood into wisdom gay;
And hath laid by her crozier, evermore
With both hands gathering to enrich her store,
And make her courts with music ring alway.

Love her, for that the world is in her heart,
Man's rude antiquity and doubtful goal,
The heaven-enthralling luxury of art,
The burden'd pleading of his clay-bound soul,
The mutual office of delight and dole,
The merry laugh of youth, the joy of life
Older than thought, and the unamending strife
'Twixt liberty and politic control.

There is none holier, not the lilied town
By Arno, whither the spirit of Athens fled,
Escap't from Hades to a less renown,
Yet joyful to be risen from the dead;
Nor she whose wide imperious arms were spread
To spoil mankind, until the avenger came
In darkening storm, and left a ruin'd name,
A triple crown upon a vanquish't head.

What love in myriad hearts in every clime
The vision of her beauty calls to pray'r:
Where at his feet Himalaya sublime
Holds up aslope the Arabian floods, or where

391

Patriarchal Nile rears at his watery stair;
In the broad islands of the Antipodes,
By Esperanza, or in the coral seas
Where Buddha's vain pagodas throng the air;

Or where the chivalry of Nipon smote
The wily Muscovite, intent to creep
Around the world with half his pride afloat,
And sent his battle to the soundless deep;
Or with our pilgrim-kin, and them that reap
The prairie-corn beyond cold Labrador
To California and the Alaskan shore,
Her exiled sons their pious memory keep:

Bright memories of young poetic pleasure
In free companionship, the loving stress
Of all life-beauty lull'd in studious leisure,
When every Muse was jocund with excess
Of fine delight and tremulous happiness;
The breath of an indolent unbridled June,
When delicate thought fell from the dreamy moon:
But now strange care, sorrow, and grief oppress.

‘Ah! fewer tears shall be,—'tis thus they dream,—
Ah, fewer, softer tears, when we lie low:
On younger brows shall brighter laurel gleam:
Lovelier and earlier shall the rosebuds blow.’
For in this hope she nurs'd them, and to know
That Truth, while men regard a tetter'd page,
Leaps on the mountains, and from age to age
Reveals the dayspring's inexhausted glow.

Yet all their joy is mingled with regret:
As the lone scholar on a neighbouring height,
Brooding disconsolate with eyelids wet
Ere o'er the unkind world he took his flight,

392

Look'd down upon her festal lamps at night,
And while the far call of her warning bell
Reach't to his heart, sang us his fond farewell,
Beneath the stars thinking of lost delight;

‘Farewell! for whether we be young or old,
Thou dost remain, but we shall pass away:
Time shall against himself thy house uphold,
And build thy sanctuary from decay;
Children unborn shall be thy pride and stay.
May Earth protect thee, and thy sons be true;
And God with heavenly food thy life renew,
Thy pleasure and thy grace from day to day.’

University of Virginia Library

14 AN INVITATION TO THE OXFORD PAGEANT, JULY 1907

14
AN INVITATION TO THE OXFORD PAGEANT, JULY 1907